InsuringIndia.com is India’s first multilingual ecommerce portal and the leading online insurance aggregator.
We provide a simple and intelligent customer-centric online platform for our clients, in their language of choice, to compare, choose and purchase all types of insurance products.
We also provide services to manage policies online

Friday, October 4, 2013

IRDA extends product re-filing deadline by 3 months

The Insurance Regulatory and
Development Authority (IRDA), on Monday, issued a circular deferring the
product re-filing deadline for life insurance companies by three months i.e. from
October 1 to January 1, 2014. Now, the life insurance companies can sell their
existing products till December 31, 2013.

The
regulator had extended the deadline because the Life Insurance Council and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC)
of India had earlier sought an extension of the deadline. In case of not extending the
deadline, the life insurers would have been
able to offer only fewer policies; as most of the insurers had filed products with new
regulations only in the last week of September. This may lead to a slowdown in sales
of life insurance products.

“We
have decided to give an extension of three months. We realise that these are
productive months for insurers. All 24 insurers have filed their products but
most of these products, particularly that of the Life Insurance Corporation of
India’s came to us in the last week of September. So we have decided to give an
extension,” said Sri Sudhin Roy Chowdhury, Member Life, IRDA.

Although,
there is no extension of deadline on highest NAV guaranteed products. Insurers
will have to discontinue these products from October 1, 2013, Sri Roy added.

As per the new guidelines, life
insurers will not be permitted to offer guaranteed highest NAV (Net Asset
Value) products in the unit-linked segment.

In the case of unit-linked products (ULIPs), life insurance companies
will need to inform customers about changes in the yield every month. The regulator, through the new
norms, aims to make insurance products more customer-friendly and to curb
product mis-sellings.